The Maid of Sker

by R. D. Blackmore

There I smelled a new tobacco, directly I was in the room; and somebody (pleased with my perception) gave me several pipes of it, with a thimbleful—as I became more and more agreeable—of a sort of rum-and-water. And, confining myself, as my principle is, to what the public treat me to, it is not quite out of the question that I may have been too generous. And truly full I was of grief, upon the following morning, that somebody had made me promise, in a bubbling moment, to be there again, and bring my fiddle, on the Tuesday night.

Now, since the death of my dear wife, who never put up with my fiddle (except when I was courting her), it had seemed to my feelings to be almost a levity to go fiddling. Also I knew what everybody would begin to say of me; but the landlord, foreseeing a large attendance after the Coroner's inquest, would not for a moment hear of any breach of my fiddle pledge.

Half of Newton, and perhaps all Nottage, went to Sker the following day to see the Coroner, and to give him the benefit of their opinions. And another piece of luck there was to tempt them in that direction. For the ship which had been wrecked and had disappeared for a certain time, in a most atrocious manner, was rolled about so by the tide and a shift of the wind on Monday, that a precious large piece of her stern was in sight from the shore on Tuesday morning. It lay not more than a cable's length from low-water mark, and was heaved up so that we could see as far as the starboard mizzen-chains. Part of the taffrail was carried away, and the carving gone entirely, but the transom and transom-knees stood firm; and of the ship's name done in gold I could make out in large letters Ta Lucia; and underneath, in a curve, and in smaller letters, Ador.

Of course no one except myself could make head or tail of this; but after thinking a little while, I was pretty sure of the meaning of it—namely, that the craft was Portuguese, called the Santa Lucia, and trading from San Salvador, the capital of Brazils. And in this opinion I was confirmed by observing through my spy-glass, copper bolt-heads of a pattern such as I had seen at Lisbon, but never in any British ship. However, I resolved, for the present, to keep my opinion to myself, unless it were demanded upon good authority. For it made me feel confused in mind, and perhaps a little uneasy, when, being struck by some resemblance, I pulled from the lining of my hat a leaf of a book, upon which I copied all that could be made out of the letters, each side of the tiller of my new boat; and now I found them to be these,—uc from the starboard side, just where they would have stood in Lucia—and dor from the further end of the line, just as in San Salvador.

The sands were all alive with people, and the rocks, and every place where anything good might have drifted. For Evan Thomas could scarcely come at a time of such affliction to assert his claims of wreck, and to belabour right and left. Therefore, for a mile or more, from where the land begins to dip, and the old stone wall, like a jagged cord, divides our parish from Kenfig, hundreds of figures might be seen, running along the grey wet sands, and reflected by their brightness. The day was going for two of the clock, and the tide growing near to the turn of ebb; and the landsprings oozing down from the beach, spread the whole of the flat sands so, with a silver overlaying, that without keen sight it was hard to tell where the shore ended and sea began. And a great part of this space was sprinkled with naked feet going pattering—boys and girls, and young women and men, who had left their shoes up high on the rocks to have better chance in the racing.

Now it is not for me to say that all or half of these good people were so brisk because they expected any fine thing for themselves. I would not even describe them as waiting in readiness for the force of fortune by the sea administered. I believe that all were most desirous of doing good, if possible. In the first case, to the poor people drowned; but if too late, then to console any disconsolate relations: failing of which, it would be hard if anybody should blame them for picking up something for themselves.

"What! you here, mother Probyn?" I cried, coming upon a most pious old woman, who led the groaning at Zoar Chapel, and being for the moment struck out of all my manners by sight of her.

"Indeed, and so I am, old Davy," she answered, without abashment, and almost too busy to notice me; "the Lord may bless my poor endeavours to rescue them poor Injuns. But I can't get on without a rake. If I had only had the sense to bring my garden-rake. There are so many little things, scarcely as big as cockleshells; and the waves do drag them away from me. Oh, there, and there goes another! Gwenny, if I don't smack you!"

All these people, and all their doings, I left with a sort of contempt, perhaps, such as breaks out on me now and then at any very great littleness. And I knew that nothing worth wet of the knees could be found with the ebb-tide running, and ere the hold of the ship broke up.

So I went toward the great house, whose sorrows and whose desolation they took little heed of. And nothing made me feel more sad—strange as it may seem, and was—than to think of poor black Evan, thus unable to stand up and fight for his unrighteous rights.